Scummy scrapers

A website that I won’t name (I don’t want them to get the traffic) has been scraping and republishing my content without my consent. I think this is reprehensible, and it’s pissing me off. The very post I put up earlier today has already been scraped and republished. The site has Google ads on it, so I’ve already reported it to Google, following the advice here. I’ve also added a copyright header to my RSS feed so that it’s very clear that no one has the right to reproduce my material. Finally, I’m telling the scrapers right now to fuck off and die.

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6 thoughts on “Scummy scrapers”

They are a pain. I tried to be nice to start, then I sent warnings and then I became stern. But they only budged when I threatened all out war on them. Be persistent and Google usually does a good job of cutting off their revenue stream.

It took me about three minutes to find the site you were talking about. (Sorry, I had to give them one hit!)

This entire blog really is an example of taking a basic, positive blog concept (Posting teaser excerpts from other blogs or articles to spread a discussion and drive traffic back to the original writer) and turning it into outright hackery and theft.

They structure it to appear as if has some editorial framing (a necessity for Fair Use), but it is clear the whole thing is run by a Bot now. They scrape your very post about them, which pretty much ought to show the blog is on computer pilot. But you can also see that they’ve even given up on the template. Every post on the front page omits the blog name!

Overall, it is really sad. Some of the best blogs out there are almost entirely links to other writers (e.g. Instapundit), and cocktail blogging could probably use someone like that. But this “attempt” just throws mud on the concept.

Adam says that they scrape the comments too, Michael? I have bad news, the scraper site that I was referring to is NOT scraping the comments. That means that there are at least TWO sites scraping your content.